


With Everything That I've Lost

by Namarie



Series: Bloodlines [3]
Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 08:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3685647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Namarie/pseuds/Namarie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Red tells her, if not everything, the most important thing. This is how it starts to change them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Everything That I've Lost

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to my other AU fic, "What You Leave Behind, What You Choose To Become", and a prequel of sorts to "We Bleed The Same". It's also kind of a sequel to Mack_the_Spoon's "In From The Cold".  
> Regarding the timeline: this takes place around two years in the future from the show's current chronology, but functions as a replacement for some of the events of Luther Braxton.
> 
> Thanks to Mack_the_Spoon for the beta, as usual.

~  
There was no point in continuing to delay it. Soon enough, she would either hear about the significance of the coloration match from someone else, or perhaps even guess it from observing more of their kind. It was sheer coincidence that she hadn't been in a position to observe both Anna Marie and David while they were transformed in the warehouse, after all. At this point, there were enough people in the world who knew or could discover the nature of their relationship easily that he could no longer claim to be protecting her by keeping the information from her.

So it was time. Red had wished for several years now that he could think of some way to tell her that would be easy for her, that wouldn't cause her pain. But his ability to plan and consider all the possible outcomes failed him here. He would hurt her with this truth. There was no way around it.

He called her on a day that her workload hadn't been abnormally stressful. He kept his tone light as he invited her to come by the house where he was currently staying, telling her only that he had some information she would want to hear. She sounded distracted as she accepted. He told her Dembe would pick her up from work and that she could give Agent Ressler the night off from his duties, and then ended the call.

“Tonight? Does that give you enough time to prepare?” Dembe asked as he took the phone.

He smiled up at Dembe from his seat, wearily. “I've had years to prepare, my friend. And it still isn't enough time.”

Dembe nodded, eyes full of sympathy, and left him to his thoughts.

When Lizzie arrived at the house, he ushered her into the living room. She was faintly amused at the offering of Chinese food, and he wasn't ashamed to admit (to himself at least) that he had ordered her favorites on purpose. They ate together while Red listened to Lizzie describe her day at the office, at his request.

“Okay, Red,” she said, as she was finishing off a carton of orange chicken, “what's the information you wanted to tell me?” She narrowed her eyes. “And why aren't you eating? What's wrong?”

He had tried to eat, but it had stuck in his throat. It had been much easier just to enjoy this time, and try not to think about the chance that these might be the last pleasant moments he shared with Lizzie, likely for a long while.

Red cleared his throat. Now was the moment. As ever, he chose to come at the revelation sideways. “Have you noticed that there seem to be almost as many colors of dragon hide as there are flowers in a garden, Lizzie? I've often wondered how that came to be, and whether there are legends from our ancestors that we've lost, that would undertake to explain where that variety came from.” He stood up, walking away from the coffee table and over to face the window. “I'm sure there is much that has been lost to us, on that subject as well as many others.”

Lizzie was silent for a few beats. Then he heard her stand up as well, and come closer. “I would have thought, if anyone knew about the existence of volumes of dragon lore thought to be lost, it would be you.” Her tone was serious, but also a little self-deprecating.

“Unfortunately not,” he told her. He sighed. “But there is significance to at least one aspect of our coloration, and it's something all of us learn quickly.”

She took a few more steps closer. “And what's that?” There was a note of suspicion in her voice now.

Red took a deep breath. “Our coloration is an inherited trait,” he told her. He turned to face her. He owed her that much, at least. “A parent will pass on his or her color to any children, provided there's enough dragon heritage to pass it on at all.”

She hadn't made the connection yet, but she was curious. “What if both parents are dragons? What happens then?”

“That's rare enough these days, but I suppose there's some kind of Mendelian genetic rule that goes into effect in those cases.” He was so close. It wasn't often that he lost his nerve.

“Why are you telling me this now? Not that it's not useful to know...”

He allowed just a hint of his emotion to show. “Because the coloration isn't an exact match to the parent,” he said, and swallowed. “Often, it's just very close on the color spectrum.”

It took her perhaps fifteen seconds to get it. Then her eyes widened, and she gasped, and took a step back. “Oh, my God.” She put her hands to her mouth and took another sharp breath. “Oh my God.”

Red stayed where he was, though he longed to reach for her. He was terribly afraid of what she would do if he did – or really, of what she might do next no matter what he did. His arms hung at his sides. He made himself continue to meet her eyes, even though her anger and hurt were clear.

“You told me you would never lie to me,” she said at last, after she had brought her breathing under control to some extent. Her voice was raw. “You said you wouldn't, but when I asked you--”

He shook his head. “I don't have the right to be called your father, Lizzie,” he said quietly. “I didn't raise you. I wasn't there when you needed me.”

“Why?!” Her anguish cut him to the quick. She stepped toward him, fists clenched, but stopped herself before she reached him. Tears were pouring down her face now. “Tell me why.”

“Because you wouldn't have lived to see your fifth birthday,” he told her. “You-- you witnessed something that night, before the fire. You don't remember it, but if I had claimed you as mine twenty-eight years ago instead of making sure you were hidden, there are people in positions of power who would have done anything they could to extract those memories from you. They would have hurt you, tortured you, broken you, and I couldn't--” He bowed his head. “They had already taken a great deal from me. I couldn't let them take you.”

Lizzie stared at him, still breathing raggedly, still crying. Slowly, she raised her right hand. She looked down at her scar for a moment and then back at him. “You were there. It's like … I can almost remember.”

“Yes.” He breathed the slightest bit easier. She was listening to him, at least.

“But I still don't understand,” she said, lowering her hand again and glaring at him. “I don't remember witnessing anything. I don't remember that night. I don't even remember your face, or my mother's face, or...” She trailed off. “What was so important that these people would have killed me to learn it?”

Red shook his head again. “Lizzie, I can't--”

“Damn it, don't you _dare_ say you can't tell me!” she yelled, and this time she moved right up into his face. “If you say those words to me, I am walking out of here and not coming back.”

She had made similar threats before, but that didn't mean Red would take it lightly. Besides, she was right to insist. He nodded. “You're right. You do need to know.”

Lizzie blinked. “Okay.” She gave him a little more space. “Then tell me.”

“That night, you overheard an argument about something called the Fulcrum,” Red informed her. He was doing his best now to keep a lid on his own memories and emotions. She didn't need to know every detail. “It's information that, if made known, would be the downfall of quite a large number of powerful, influential men.”

“Blackmail,” she said, after a moment. She frowned. “But I don't know anything about it.”

“Perhaps not. But you were present.” He wasn't going to push the issue. It was better for her if she still didn't remember, after all. He guessed she would have more questions specifically about the Fulcrum later, but for now, that wasn't foremost on her mind.

She was quiet for several seconds. Then she bit her lip and looked at him again. “So … you were in danger because of this Fulcrum, and you knew I was in danger, too. So you brought me to Sam. I can understand that. But there are still so many things I need to know. I don't even-- God, I don't even know where to start!”

She was fighting back tears again. Red stepped toward her, arms open, and closed his eyes when she came to him and wrapped her own arms around him. Something in him that he thought he had broken permanently more than two decades ago started to heal. It was a fragile, miraculous sensation. He tightened his grip on his daughter. _My dear Lizzie_ , he said to her, _I promise you, this is the beginning of the end of all the secrets._

 _Good_ , she said, _because I'm still mad at you._ She laughed in his arms, belying her words, and pulled away enough to look into his face. Her smile was shy. “But I've heard families work through these kinds of things, right?”

“Yes,” he said, returning the smile, and pushing a lock of her hair behind her ear. There was, as she had said, so much more that she didn't know. Some of it would still hurt her. But they were beginning as well as he could have ever hoped. This strong, beautiful woman that he had just started to come to know still surprised and delighted him. “So I've heard.”

~

They took it fairly slow. Both of them, he thought, needed time to adjust to their newly defined relationship – and it wasn't as if their lives came to a halt in the meantime. Lizzie had her work with the FBI, and he had the Blacklisters that he decided were next. Beyond this, he and Lizzie had the work of getting her established in the draconic world, which they had already begun before that fateful evening.

One of the first days they had to spend together after that evening, Red cleared up a little bit more of her confusion. “You told me last week that you couldn't claim me as yours,” she said, as they walked along the waterfront. “That makes it sound like--” She hesitated. “Like there was some doubt. Unless this is some other weird dragon thing I don't know about, I guess.”

Red smiled sadly and shook his head. “No. But the word choice was deliberate.” He stopped walking and stared out at the water. These memories weren't easy to return to, even after all this time. “I had just lost my family. My wife went into witness protection, and our daughter was missing, presumed--” The images were there, in front of his eyes again, and he shut them and fell silent. After a moment, he felt Lizzie slip her hand into his. “Anyway,” he said, clearing his throat and opening his eyes again, “it was only a few weeks later that I learned of your existence. Your mother had never told me. She wanted her husband to believe you were his – and he did, until a few days before the fire.”

Lizzie was having difficulty controlling her emotions, he could tell. It was no wonder. If this was difficult for him, when he was almost three decades removed, it was bound to be painful for her when it was this new. He squeezed her hand and looked at her. “I was angry at your mother for keeping you a secret from me – but you'll never know how much it meant to me to learn, during that terrible time of my life, that my failure as a husband and a father had produced something beautiful.”

She took a deep breath and tried to smile, but didn't quite succeed. “Jennifer. She was my sister,” she said softly, after another pause.

He closed his eyes again and nodded. “She was,” he said. “And someday I'll tell you about her. But not today.”

She didn't push, for which he was grateful.

~

Today they were hunting together, in the same expanse of land where Lizzie had first transformed. Red wasn't too focused on actually searching for prey; he was mostly enjoying the sunlight on his back and wings, and the chance to fly with his daughter again. It was also a relief to find that, although several of the scars on his wings twinged every now and then, his flight was not at all impeded.

The young dragon herself, on the other hand, was getting impatient. _If I were in a restaurant, I'd already have started eating my lunch by now_ , she grumbled. She was at a slightly lower altitude and to his right as she scanned the ground below them.

 _Patience, Lizzie_ , he said, amused. _Don't you have plenty of stakeout experience you can draw on?_

 _Sure. This is totally the same_ , she replied, shooting him a look. Returning her attention to the hunt, she added, _Except that in a stakeout, your prey comes right to you._

The two of them continued to soar over his territory for perhaps another ten minutes. Then they both saw movement at the edge of a stand of trees. They waited, almost hovering, until the herd of deer began to come into view. There were six of them.

 _I'll drive them away from the trees_ , Red said. _Then we'll take them._

Lizzie agreed, and they set to work. It didn't take long. As soon as Red dove at the animals from the direction of the trees, the deer panicked and fled out toward the open grass. Then Lizzie was there to head them off. They allowed two to escape, since two each was enough. Red thought he had felt a jolt of shock from Lizzie before she struck down her two animals, but if so she didn't seem very bothered by whatever it was at the moment. They ate where they landed.

 _Do most dragons have a patch of land they use for hunting?_ Lizzie asked after they were nearly finished.

 _If they're able to get it, yes,_ he told her. _It fills several functions: as an entirely legal and enjoyable way of letting off steam, good exercise, and a way to get back to our true natures. We are predators, after all._ He didn't come out here all that often, but that meant the hunting was all the better when he did. Deer and other wildlife didn't have enough encounters with him to associate the area with danger.

 _Yeah._ Lizzie cleaned the remains of the meat from her second carcass, then began to clean her claws and her face. Red turned aside to do the same.

They were quiet for a while. Red was thinking about other places he had gone hunting when Lizzie broke the silence. Her voice was quiet but insistent. _Red. If I asked, would you let me see the scars on your back?_

He raised his head to look at her. Of course – she had seen when he dove first. Most of the time they were hidden under his clothes or under his wings. _Do you need to see them?_ he asked her. He raised his wings, enough that the scarred skin would be just visible. She took a sharp breath. _Or are you really asking for an explanation for them?_

 _What happened?_ she whispered.

Red folded his wings again. _It was a long time ago, Lizzie_ , he said, suddenly tired. He had relived enough of the memories of that night, and done his best to avoid discussing with her the remaining topics associated with it.

She wasn't going to let this go so easily, though. _Was it twenty-eight years ago? In the fire?_

 _Yes_ , he admitted.

 _I don't remember_ , she said, and now she sounded small and lost, though she was neither.

 _I know._ He took several steps closer to her. _It doesn't matter. It was a long time ago_ , he repeated.

 _But you were hurt, badly._ She didn't look away from his gaze.

He gave the dragon equivalent of a smile, then. _And you weren't. I've told you before, Lizzie: I will do whatever I feel I have to do to keep you alive._

She seemed to accept this, at least as well as she ever did. But after a few seconds, she closed the distance between them and gently touched her wingtip to his. _I'm glad you made it out of there._

 _It'll take a lot more than some burns to kill me, Lizzie_ , he said. She was serious, though, so he smiled again. _But thank you. I'm glad, too._

~


End file.
